Ten Years Ago - December 2015

Something historical for this month's Ten Year time-machine post. Back in December 2015 we played a big DBA game recreating the battle of Chaeronea, using some lovely 15mm figures.

Here's the post:

Pikes & Hoplites - Chaeronea 338BC

And here's an arse:

Dark Ages DBA

After my game of DBA the other week I got to thinking that not only had I not played it in a while, but that it had been a long time since my various Dark Ages armies had seen the light of day.

Yesterday I got them out and had a few games.

First onto the table were my old favourites, the Sub-Roman British against some early Scots-Irish. This is basically cavalry and spears against chariots and auxilia. Against the odds the Irish defended, and set up in some marshy woodland on the coast.

Irish chariots.

British cavalry.

The Irish brought in some auxilia by sea to threaten the British camp. The British had left some pedyts to cover against this possibility and they basically spent the game in a stand-off.

The remaining pedyts spent most of the game watching Irish auxilia in a marsh.

The British did what the British do best; a cavalry charge. with hindsight doing this without bringing up at least a couple of supporting pedyts was a foolish thing. 

The British were thrown back.

And now the Irish responded. Although they were lurking in a marsh the Irish could bring up their fast-moving warriors to support the chariots and that open British flank was quickly exploited.

Amazingly the British cavalry element not only fought off the opposition, but destroyed it, giving the British the first kill of the battle.

Low PIPs meant they couldn't exploit the advantage and the Irish carried on feeding in auxilia and surrounding the British cavalry.

The British held off the attacks and got a stab at killing teh Irish general. They failed. I also sent in some cavalry against chariots that had recoiled into a marsh. In HOTT this chariot would be vulnerable and easy to kill, but in DBA it simply flees if it loses. I found that out when I double-checked the combat results.

A nice shot of the Irish general not dying.

The British general was surrounded and killed.

Some British cavalry broke through and sacked the Irish camp which, it turns out, still wasn't enough for a win.

The Irish got things together and destroyed more British horse, giving them the win.

It was a relatively close game. The Irish lost two chariots and their camp, whilst the British lost two cavalry (one the general) and a light horse. The Irish won 4g-3. The British foot did nothing.

For the second game the Saxons defended against a Pictish attack. The Saxons are nearly all warband, whilst the Picts are a core of fast pike-armed troops supported by light cavalry and psiloi.

Saxon warband in two ranks.

The Picts faced the Saxon foot with their own and put their horse on the flank to try an outflank the Saxon advance.

The Saxons charged with their main line and sent off their right flank to hold up the cavalry.

A brisk skirmish against the Saxon right flank saw the Picts hurled back.

The two infantry lines clashed. The solid Saxon warbands had the advantage here, but the deep Pictish pike-blocks were still dangerous opponents.

Indeed the first casualty was a Saxon warband. The lines shoved back and forth.

But soon the Saxon ferocity began to tell, and the Pictish line crumbled.

And collapsed. Their horse couldn't get over to the fight in time to stave off disaster.

The Saxons won 4-1. This was a second game lost because an army didn't coordinate their cavalry and their infantry. Make a note of that, kids.

The third game saw the Saxons defending against another attack, this time from teh Welsh. The Welsh are another warband army, but their warband are light and fast. They also have more psiloi and a cavalry general.

Although the attacker the Welsh adopted a defensive posture, using a hill and a hamlet to bolster their line.

The Saxons actually have a slight edge in a straight fight because their solid warband in draws against the Welsh equivalents. The Saxons charged ...

... and the Welsh were mostly pushed back. There's one exception in the foreground.

Indeed that was the flank where a Welsh warband destroyed a Saxon counterpart. This gave the Welsh a free element to use. And their advantage was that their warband are more mobile.

So as the Saxon centre drove the Welsh back through the hamlet, their right flank was now very vulnerable. And the Welsh general was leading his cavalry followers in an attack on the Saxon left.

As you'd expect, things were breaking up a fair bit as the various warband fights shoved back and forth.

The Welsh general in action. There's tidy!

The Saxon right was eliminated, but they were scoring kills in the centre.

The Saxon general was doing well, shoving back the opposition with great ferocity.

But the Welsh general got a kill ...

... as did some warband in the centre ...

... and over on the Welsh right their skirmishing archers prevailed over their Saxon opposite numbers.

The Saxon army saw a total collapse - the Welsh won 6-2!

The games were good fun, even if (having not played DBA for a while) I had to look lots of stuff up. It's very different from HOTT in many way.

Pre-MOAB DBA

A couple of our group are playing in teh DBA competition at MOAB this year, so wanted some practice games. I'm not playing, but I tagged along because DBA seemed like a good option. 

I haven't played DBA for a while now, so was a bit rusty. I also wasn't sure what armies to bring as the others would be trying out one based on the theme for the year and I had no idea what the theme was. In the end I just grabbed a few 15mm armies - my Swiss, my Mound Builders and the Maya (who share a box with the latter, so came along for the ride).

Turns out that Dave and Geoff are also a bit rusty, so I watched the first game and offered helpful rules advice from the sidelines by looking stuff up.

Then I was up. For reasons that were not entirely clear I ended up using a completely non-historical army. My Swiss share their box with my Prester John army, which is made up entirely of  figures that look perfectly at home as a DBA army. Dave suggested I use it, so I did. It's one element short though, so some Swiss mounted crossbowmen joined.

Dave ran a Chinese army with lots of chariots I forget what dynasty it was. The theme for one of the competitions is chariot armies. 

So my army was three knights (including the general), two solid blades, three solid bow, two solid warband, one light horse and one elephant. Dave's army had four heavy chariots (including the general) a couple of bow, a psiloi and three fast blades.

And here we are, set up and ready to go.

I just piled the elephant forward, treating it like the HOTT behemoth it is. Dave brought out some psiloi to take it on . And that was the elephant pretty much stuffed, since it can't destroy them or even make them flee. Eventually they would win a combat and destroy me. My only hope was to make them retreat and have them do so through a friendly element so I could attack that instead. Dave avoided that by moving thing out of the way.

Long story short - my elephant was neutralised.

Still, we had a nice fight between knights in the centre. Also my blades took on Dave's and there was a lot of shoving back and forth.

I made a bit of a breakthrough in the centre when my general destroyed the chariots opposite him. Thus allowed me to flank Dave's general. Inevitably I was unable to convert this good fortune into a game-ending kill.

On my right my warband crested the brow of a hill and found themselves able to rush down on a pair of enemy blades. They'd end up destroying both of them.

In fact Dave converted my general's recklessness into a kill instead. So we were both sat on three elements lost piece at this stage.

This quickly became four elements apiece - a tie in other words. Next goal would win, so to speak.

My blades on the left provided it, destroying one of their opposite number.

Four of my five kills were blades on the flanks (one was destroyed by archery, if you can believe that. To be fair it took a fair bit of concentrated archery to achieve it.). I lost two knight and an elephant.

So Prester John picked up a rare win, even if it was via being a non-standard DBA army.

Alexander

Just over 20 years ago I helped out on a school trip one of my kids was on to the National Gallery in London. Whilst on a short break from my charges I came across this painting by Paolo Verenese - 'The Family of Darius Before Alexander', painted around 1570.

What I loved about it was the fact that it was a classical theme, but everyone was in contemporary (for 1570) dress, including, of course, the soldiers. Its the same with this version of the same scene by Bellucci, from the Ashmolean:

And in a wild moment an idea struck me. It would be fun to do an Alexander wargames army, with all of the 'correct' troop types but depicted with 16th century figures. 

Naturally, being me, this thought passed out of my mind for the next 20 years, but I was reminded of it last week and also reminded that I now actually had a box of random 15th/16th century figures in a box from when I did my Early Swiss army a few years ago. I dug them out, along with the DBA Alexandrian Macedonian army-list, and had a look to see what I could do. My first thought was that it would be a fun HOTT army, and I was able to put this together:

The army consists of:

1 x Hero General @ 4AP (Alexander)

1 x Knights @ 2AP (Companions)

1 x Rider @ 2AP (Light Cavalry)

6 x Spears @ 2AP (Phalanx)

1 x Blade or Warband @ 2AP (Hypaspists)

2 x Lurkers or 1 x Shooter @2AP (Skirmishing missile troops)

I found some extra figures to add in extras for the HOTT army or to allow it to be run as a legitimate DBA army. Almost. See below.

So here's Alexander, in full-plate armour. Ideally I'd like a figure that's a little more energetic in pose, but I had to work with what I had. I'll swap it for something better if I find anything.

The mounted troops. I didn't have any suitable figures to be ersatz Thessalian cavalry, something my DBA version will need and which I will organise at some stage. But I had knights for the companions, and some mounted crossbowmen for the light cavalry.

The phalangites. These were the most work as they all needed their pikes replacing with something sturdier. 

The Hypaspists. I can't remember what they're supposed to look like, but the DBA list as then as 4Ax, so they're kind of not quite light troops but not heavies either. In my HOTT Inca army the 4Ax are classed as blades, but I based these with a more irregular look and would probably run them as warband in order to give the army a bad-going capability.

The spare element is firstly so that the warband could have a second rank and secondly because one of the DBA options is 4Ax Thracians.

Missile troops - you get the option of some archer lurkers or shooter handgunners.

And the optional elements for DBA or variants of the HOTT army - some artillery and some horse-archers at the back, plus some 'Thracians' and an element of psiloi in the form of crossbowment at the front.

For the complete DBA army I'd need some equivalent of the Thessalian cavalry and something for the mercenary Greek hoplites.

Anyway, it was a silly idea from 20 years ago that used up spare figures I had around and took very little time in terms of painting - I had to do the new pikes, paint a gun and rebase everything, but that was it. And now I have a new HOTT army plus a DBA army that will annoy purists.